The paintings in this room achieve something very special indeed. Something that I am, as a writer, quite envious of. That is, the expression of the incommunicable. Those feelings that sit in your gut, that burn and breathe with each rise of your chest. Those Large Emotions for which language simply won’t do; when anger or grief leave us speechless and that physical frustration we feel when we’re lost for words. Hayes’ paintings defy language’s failure to communicate when it's most needed. In these paintings, a bitten tongue, a swallowed word become a scream, an exclamation.
We struggle to understand that which can’t be spoken. A memory might hit you on a certain day, in certain circumstances, in a way that nearly floors you. But the spoken echoes of that memory will never do the same. We can’t control when those moments hit us, and our inability to articulate them makes them all the more precious.
But there lies the magic of Hayes’ paintings. They are marked by expression and not explanation. These are works created in flurried moments of emotion which have not been interrogated or picked apart before making it onto canvas. These are those moments, raw and pure, preserved in truthful beauty. Once fleeting feelings have been captured and held so that they may be felt again in perpetuity. It is this extended access to those Large Emotions which allows us to understand their depth. These ephemeral moments of physical and emotional intensity – are caught like a fly in a glass.
To capture those moments is a hard thing to do. It requires patience, and I’m sure there are paintings that haven’t made it to this room today. But those works reverberate here as well. They are a testament to the time spent trying to get to that place of deep feeling. The consistency of Hayes’ practice has ensured that when those moments of Large Emotion arrive, she is ready to seize upon them.
This exhibition is named for a song by Alice in Chains. I know Hayes’ practice is strongly linked with music and I believe music offers a unique entry point into these moments of emotional depth. You’ve all had that feeling – your headphones are on, your eyes are closed, and the music just kind of falls over you. You connect to a song more than ever before. Its that moment of kismet, where sound, memory and circumstance combine to create a visceral charge that runs through your heart and fizzes, electric, throughout your whole body. Emotion is distilled into a moment of intense physicality.
This work evokes an identical feeling. Those Large Emotions, that intensity of feeling we can’t access in everyday life, have been made accessible to all of us now. They have been captured here on eight canvases. Just as Hayes’ expression is fuelled by music, she has facilitated a similar opportunity for all of us here. An opportunity to connect with the powerful empathy of her work and tap into those Large Emotions over which we usually have no control.
In this room we see a transition from grief and frustration to a place where, though those feelings remain, they are no longer oppressive. Where we are confronted by the great mass of feeling we all carry inside us, where pain and joy are absorbed and we are changed by it. Where shades of darkness persist, but the picture is brighter. A very valuable place where black gives way to blue.
